Paul McCartney to hit the stage at Yale. Demand for tickets crashes the online system.

Paul McCartney’s finally hitting a Yale stage.

The Beatles bassist, Wings frontman, symphony composer, longtime solo artist, vegetarian activist and Gibson Les Paul guitar enthusiast is also an author. He’ll be talking about his new book “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present” on Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. in Yale’s Woolsey Hall.

Demand for tickets to the talk crashed the online ticketing system. On Wednesday, a message on the site for Yale’s Schwartzman Center, which planned the event, says the registration for public tickets was suspended until the issue could be fixed. On Thursday the issue was still unresolved and the center says it “will soon set a new date and time when members of the public can obtain tickets.”

In 1990, McCartney was scheduled to play the Yale Bowl, but the show was canceled due to opposition from neighbors. The same section of New Haven is now the site of the Westville Music Bowl concert arena.

McCartney was at Yale in 2008 to receive an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the university.

The Yale event will have McCartney discussing “The Lyrics” with the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry from his collection “Moy Sand and Gravel,” and Yale Professor of English Langdon Hammer, a poetry scholar who has written books on James Merrill, Hart Crane and others.

“The Lyrics” runs to 960 pages, contained in two slipcased volumes (song titles “A-K” and “L-Z”), and retails for around $50. The book covers 154 songs that McCartney wrote during his long career, starting in his boyhood and continuing now into his 80s.

The 2,650-seat Woolsey Hall stage has previously been used for concerts by Bob Dylan, U2, Duke Ellington and many others.

Reach reporter Christopher Arnott at carnott@courant.com.